fediverse

There is No New Twitter

by

Good Morning Friends! While technically a vacation day for me, I guess I am here opting to write a blog post because I have had some thoughts kicking around in my head. It has been a bit of a wild ride since the first of this month for a lot of folks on the internet. If you have not been impacted then gratz… you are not terminally online. For the rest of us, however, there has been a bit of strife even for those who abandoned that site last year. Essentially a sequence of events has led to Twitter largely being unusable for the average user that has refused to pay for the $8 per month badge of shame. Firstly on June 30th, Twitter shut off access for anyone viewing the site without logging in first… which also killed access to any links that have been shortened with T.Co. Next came the above tweet which announced that all Twitter users would be dealing with “rate limits”.

What this means in practice is that simply by leaving your Twitter client or web browser running, you would begin to lose access to new tweets when your account on any platform had cached 600 messages. New accounts are restricted to 300 I am assuming so folks don’t simply create alt accounts to bypass the quota. The rumor is that this is all being brought on by the fact that Elon Musk yet again failed to pay one of his bills… this time for hosting in the Google Cloud. There has supposedly been a mad dash within Twitter to migrate elsewhere, and the impossible task was not completed in time… leading to the entire service being severely throttled instead of fessing up to this… it is being played as more of Elon’s crusade against bots and data scraping.

This is not the first time we have decreed that Twitter was burning. However, this is maybe the first time that it has truly adversely impacted the average user. 600 Tweets is not a lot given how spammy some users are, and given that promoted tweets and the things that the algorithm crams in your feed also count towards that number… most everyone ends up being rate limited before long. There is actually a weird sub-community that has sprung up around trying to speed-run the rate limit. The end result of this is that folks who never considered leaving… are not desperately seeking a solution. Essentially everyone seems to be looking for the next Twitter.

The latest greatest home seems to be Blue Sky. For those who are completely unaware of what this nonsense is, essentially Jack Dorsey of Twitter fame… has gone off and attempted to create his own corporate version of Mastodon that looks and feels like Twitter did circa 2008. The problem with Blue Sky is threefold… firstly it is very much a “minimum viable product” at the moment and is missing a bunch of features that one expects from a Twitter-Clone like some measure of private messaging. Secondly, they are using the Gmail model for growth, where every so often users are given one or two invites for them to ration out to their friends. Thirdly you are jumping from the arms of one corporation that had no clue how to make enough money to sustain its service to the arms of another company with seemingly no viable business plan.

At some point, it seemed that Blue Sky was universally declared the new Twitter, and folks desperately tried to get invites to the platform. This caused so much churn that by the afternoon of the first, Blue Sky had to completely turn off invites… even for pre-existing codes that had been sent out. There was a period of time when neither Twitter nor Blue Sky was loading at all. They have since turned back on the trickle of outstanding invites, but no new ones are being sent out. Essentially there is no room in the inn for new users, and the site is not ready for public launch. The folks who are there seem to like it, and I personally think it is a reasonable place to visit… but doesn’t really feel like home. The platform as a whole is missing so many features that it really does not make sense for them to attempt to rush into production. So as a result of just not being able to accept the masses, Blue Sky will in theory fail to be the new Twitter.

Now Meta is attempting to toss their hat into the ring with Threads. I am uncertain if this is the ActivityPub option that has caused so much drama recently within the Fediverse, or if this is something entirely different that they had been working on. Whatever the case this will give folks who are already bought into Instagram an option to make Twitter-like text-based posts on that platform. While I use Instagram occasionally I don’t really love it. Instagram is a site about beautiful people posting beautiful things about their beautiful lives. I am not a beautiful person, and I am also not extremely visually motivated when it comes to expressing myself. I write walls of text broken up by screenshots, and when I am not doing that… I write dumbassed quips. Instagram has never really felt like home, and I doubt adding Twitter posts to it will make it more embracing either.

Then there are the living dead… the locations that attempted to be Twitter or at least give an alternate landing spot that failed to gain any real traction. These include Spoutible shown above, Post, CoHost, and countless others trying to be the next new place for folks to talk with each other. All of these have their own communities but they are also extremely narrow in their scope and have lacked the mass adoption required to be the next Twitter. Spoutible seems to be a carbon copy version of Twitter, and others like CoHost are leaning more on the past social networks and creating an almost Live Journal-style experience. Then there are things like Tumblr that are still alive and kicking and apparently working on federating over ActivityPub.

Then there is the Fediverse, or as most folks seem to refer to it… Mastodon. This is more the Anti-Twitter than a Twitter replacement because it was created by folks looking for an alternative to social media as it existed at the time… and was forged in the fires of folks who abandoned Twitter for various sundry reasons. There are many articles out there that will tell you that the Twitter Migration failed and that Mastodon will not be the next Twitter… and I agree with them for the most part. I think the key to understanding this is the fact that the folks running most Fediverse servers would not consider replacing Twitter as a laudable goal. It sorta just wants to exist as its own thing, which is there if folks want to partake but also… fine if folks don’t.

While I have been dabbling with Mastodon, particularly since 2018, I truly made it my home late last year and made what I hope was my final migration to Gamepad.club a server that I help administrate. I chided Blue Sky for not really having a viable business model, but the truth is… the Fediverse isn’t really out to make money either. Most servers like ours run on a patronage system where folks donate time and money to help keep the site running. This doesn’t really work at scale, but I feel like the Fediverse works when it is a bunch of smaller communities rather than attempting to be a single flagship mono-site like Mastodon.social or even honestly Mstdn.social. Because the network is so distributed… the smaller servers felt almost no impact from the crush of new user sign-ups. While we had quite a few new faces show up over the weekend… the server remained happily trucking along without missing a beat.

While there are absolutely a bunch of different options out there who do want to be the next Twitter… I don’t really think any of them will succeed at that goal. Twitter is a thing that evolved over time as the lowest common denominator, the network that everyone simultaneously agreed was tolerable enough to maintain a presence on. That began to change when Elon Musk took over, and it is a landslide that can’t really be stopped now. However once that dam truly breaks… folks are going to spread out to ALL of the options that I mentioned and many more that I didn’t… and not a single one of them will become the new ubersite. Folks have way too many options and once you realize you don’t really need Twitter or its clout, you start to focus instead on what actually brings meaning to your personal experience.

I found my new home, and while I realize most people ended up turning their noses up at the Fediverse/Mastodon experience… I found a community there. I would say maybe 30% of the total #TwitterMigration stuck around, but those who did found communities and started adding to the tapestry that is what makes that place special. While I will probably dabble in lots of different networks as they evolve into specific niche cases, my home base is always going to be Gamepad. Sure it meant that I lost a lot of friends through the transition, but I made so many brand new friends… and it isn’t like my path probably won’t cross the folks I missed along the way. It is not like I am terribly hard to find when someone decides to pay me a visit years down the line.

There won’t be a new Twitter, because you just can’t even have back a specific moment in time. For me, the final straw was Elon’s antics. For others, it will be the rate-limiting that started this week. For yet more it will be the fact that they will be losing TweetDeck in roughly 30 days if they don’t pay the $8 per month ransom to keep access. Much like there was never another World of Warcraft, because no other game really captured the moment that crafted that game… there will never be another Twitter. There will be larger communities and smaller communities… but there will be no one place where everyone has to be. I know personally… I am looking to move away from as many corporate services as I can and begin hosting my own infrastructure where possible. This blog has been around for almost fifteen years at this point, and has migrated between multiple providers… and because I own it… I know it will keep existing as my landmark on the internet for as long as I need it.

I’ve gone so far as to host my own Linktree because I did not like being beholden to that service. Sure it took a modicum of effort for me to configure Link Stack on my web host, but once done I now have a permanent way to keep my various links up to date and give someone a simple link to find pretty much everything I do. At some point… I probably want to go down the path of migrating away from Gmail. It isn’t like Google is known for keeping things around for long… so I figure at some point in the not-so-distant future the axe will come for it as well. Moving away from Twitter was more of an evolution than I realized it would be. I want to own my place on the internet, or at least trust the people who run the resources I am consuming. However… this will not be something that everyone is even interested in doing and as a result, someone will need to keep maintaining the “AOL” for those users.

I think the volume of what is available on Twitter will likely land in three different places. There will be about a third of people who do eventually migrate over to the fediverse in one form or another, even if it is corporate variants like the ActivityPub federation that Tumblr is looking at. Then there will be folks who stay loyal to Blue Sky and keep betting on Jack to make things right again out of some sense of misplaced trust that he can build a new Twitter. There will be another third that land on whatever the Meta offering ends up looking like because they are already comfortable with Instagram or Facebook and just want a turnkey solution that asks absolutely nothing of them and could not give a fuck about what that might mean for their data in the long run. The monoculture of Twitter, if there ever was such a thing… will cease to exist. Elon has done irreparable harm, and all that is left is for folks to wake up and realize that particular party is over.

There will be no new Twitter because that era is over.

[UPDATE – 14:00 CDT]

When I wrote this post earlier in the day… I was apparently super dense. I knew that Meta had been working on what is effectively their own Mastodon Client (technically just interops with ActivityPub), but I had no clue it was launching this fast. Threads is essentially a corporate storefront on the Fediverse. It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out.

Gamepad is Cozy

by

Good Morning Friends! I’ve not really talked about it here on the blog, but for a while now I have been helping with the operation of Gamepad.club. Recently there have been some situations in the greater Fediverse where instance Administrators have gone missing leading to periods of significant degradation in operation and instance culture. Due to these wider concerns, Gazz wanted to protect the instance from ever being in a situation where an administrator could not be reached. I was asked and I agreed to help around with the instance. The variance in our operating times helps us catch those sign-ups and approve them a bit faster. So if you have any questions or concerns about Gamepad.club feels free to hit me up through any of my many social channels. I’m not really around on Twitter anymore so if you reach out there, it is going to take a while for me to even notice.

I have to admit I had been somewhat hesitant to talk too broadly about my role as an administrator on Gamepad.club not because I was ashamed to talk about it, but more because I wanted to spare the instance any undue heat. I had a fairly significant falling out with the Administrator of another gaming instance that launched last November. Largely I was trying to keep from our small home drawing her spite and her blocking the instance. However, I feel like I have been walking on eggshells since the events surrounding the launch of that instance and my being removed from the moderation team. When the same exact things happened to the other moderator of the instance, I just got tired of trying to be cautious. I will not let that bullshit that we dealt with damage my joy when it comes to the fediverse any longer. I feel safer on Gamepad than I did on other instances, because I have known Gazz for so many years, and he also knows me.

We’ve not had what I would consider meteoric growth, but it has been steady growth nonetheless. I think the great social media land run is more or less over, and folks who would be willing to leave Twitter already have their flag planted on some instance here. Most of our growth has been folks migrating from other instances because they wanted a more chill local feed. Truth be told the great thing about the Fediverse is that there is no real reason why anyone needs to be on any specific server. More than anything it is about choosing your local feed and maybe having a “cool address” behind your name. We’ve thrown out a placard and announced that we were open for business, and folks have answered that call a few at a time. Even I put off moving entirely for a while because it is a bit of a hassle to uproot yourself and plant yourself in a new place… even when you feel like that new place will be a better home.

I have to admit I am honestly fine with having a bit of a personal touch to our home, rather than trying to bring in thousands of people. None of us are trying to make a living off running an instance, but instead just trying to carve out a comfy home for ourselves in this new social landscape. The really cool thing about where we are now in the fediverse is that you can maintain a small instance, yet still have a good federation with thousands of other instances. I think last I knew we were federating actively with some 9000 other instances. Small instances that are not terribly well federated have issues with hashtags and the like, but so far the handful that I follow habitually are still introducing me to new people. I admit I was a bit concerned about that by moving away from one of the “stuxlikes”, but I’ve not really seen any tangible difference. I don’t think Patreon fully covers the operating expenses but if nothing else it is putting a decent dent in them.

So far things seem to be trucking along swimmingly. There has been a bit of weirdness when someone migrates from an instance we have not had migrations from before. We aren’t entirely certain what is going on there but it settles out after a few minutes. Essentially when you migrate from another instance there is a flurry of activity as the new server handshakes with both the old server and every server that you were following folks on. The whole “moving” instance thing is relatively new as in the past the only option you had was to export the list of folks you were following and then import that list into the new home. Previously there was no means to move followers, and the new process essentially asks for permission from every instance. If it succeeds the instance has the person who was following you previously follow your new account and then unfollow your old account. This works great so long as every server is running the same version of Mastodon, but largely falls apart when you are talking about other fediverse variants like Pixelfed, Pleroma, Misskey, etc.

Because of the voluntary nature of server migration and follower moves, this is in part why I always suggest folks export all of their data manually to CSV so that they can fall back to importing those if anything does not go as planned. In a worst-case scenario, you can then manually import everyone you were following, and hope the nature of the fediverse takes hold and they follow you on the new account. Server migrations are commonplace enough that rarely does anyone really bat an eye when someone jumps instances. More than anything the ability to change instances provides a self-healing characteristic that you just don’t have in another environment. If an instance gets stale, too busy for your tastes, or is unsustainable by the administration team… then you can move your home and in most cases, the entire process takes less than fifteen minutes from start to finish. Instances sign onto the Mastodon Server Covenant as we have as a way of providing at least three months’ notice if an instance needs to shut down.

Right now we are going through a rather public scenario where a large instance is shutting down. Currently, folks are using this as an excuse to decry the failure of Mastodon. For me, I largely view it as the system succeeding because instance admins have thrown out the welcome mat to make sure the folks from Mastodon.lol needing a new home can find one easily. Migration is one of those things that is just built into the Mastodon experience. I’ve shared the entire history of my instances before, but Gamepad.club is my tenth instance and in each case, I had perfectly valid reasons to move. That isn’t to say you need a reason other than “I want to” and the beautiful thing is that after awhile folks understand that the nature of the fediverse involves people shifting into more comfortable positions. I would never put the hard sell on anyone to migrate to any instance because so long as there is no defederation nonsense at work, we will be able to talk freely no matter where you end up.

Anyways long post that went in a bunch of different directions as often mine do. I’m helping out with the operations of Gamepad.club and while I’m technically an administrator I still very much take my lead from Gazz. I mostly help out with tedious things like loading emojis and helping to approve account submissions, but am there to step in if there ever comes a need for me to take a more active role. It is a good home and we’d love to have you, but also there is no pressure to move if you are happy where you currently “live” on the fediverse.

The Last Watch

by

Over Christmas Break my wife discovered the Libby App, and as I wrote earlier this month it prompted us to get a library card for the first time in over a decade. I’ve always loved libraries, but they never really fit neatly into my adult life. Books are friends and bookstores are among the most friendly places I can think of to be in life. However I do not read anywhere near as often as I might like, and while I am well-read from a classical standpoint, I’ve done a pretty shit job of working books into my routines. Without really meaning it seems like “reading more” has become my New Year’s resolution. Since Christmas, I have consumed five books so far, and seem to show no signs of slowing. At this point, I’ve worked on catching up to the Dresden Files series and have finished off Skin Game, and Peace Talks, and am waiting on my hold to come open for Battle Grounds. After having it recommended so many times I have finished Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth and similarly wait for Nona the Ninth the latest book in that series to become available through my library hold.

This would be the primary issue with relying upon the public library system for your book consumption, that there will be periods of time when you are waiting around for the next book to become available. I’ve greatly enjoyed this little tradition that I have started and did not want to lose momentum, so this lead me to go fishing for the next book. Something you have to understand about my tendencies as a reader is that I generally find a book series that I enjoy… and then consume everything by that author. So my instinct is to focus fire a single series and see it until its conclusion, but as I said the hold queue doesn’t exactly make that viable. As a result, I started sifting around in the Libby App for books that were currently available and stumbled onto a recommendation engine of sorts (that admittedly I have never found again). It suggested that If I liked Harry Dresden and Harrowhark Nonagesemus then maybe I would like The Last Watch by J.S. Dewes.

I am not entirely certain WHY the recommendation engine picked this specific book, but I am glad that it did because I’ve enjoyed it and now the sequel that I started a few days ago. Effectively this book is deeply drift-compatible with Halo, ODST, and maybe bits and pieces of the Mass Effect universe specifically from the military aspect and maybe a little Enders Game. Effectively it is a military tale of a fish out of water who was forced into service to effectively dispose of him quietly. In this universe, humanity has fought a sort of forever war against an elder insectoid race called the Viators. It turns out humanity was extremely good at adapting their technology and using it against them. While at the time of the novel the last of the Viators are thought to be extinct… admittedly through a human-led xenocide.

Sentinel, Sentinel at the black,
Do not blink or turn your back,
You must stand ready to stem the tide,
Lest Viators come to cross the Divide.

Nursery Rhyme

On the edge of the known universe lies a gravitational anomaly known as “The Divide”. In this setting, the universe stopped expanding and settled onto fixed borders with this uncrossable boundary laying at the far edges. Urban legend states that the Viator feel arrived from the other side of it, and as a result, there lies situated in deep starless black space a fleet of abandoned battleships, each crewed by a branch of the service called the Sentinels. Effectively the Sentinels are like The Night’s Watch from Game of Thrones and are made up largely of folks who were drummed out of normal service for one reason or another. They are stranded at this post, on ancient space hulk relics that have had their FTL and Impulse drives disabled to effectively keep anyone from escaping.

The novel itself centers around two primary characters, and each chapter alternates perspectives between them as it weaves the story around the shifts in voice. First up is Cavlon Mercer, a literal corporate prince in line to take over the family business, but one that has embarrassed his grandfather to the point of being “disappeared”. Having no military experience, he is shuffled out of the core worlds and out onto this remote posting, where he has to figure out how to be a soldier in rapid succession. Then you have Adequin Rake an Excubitor and commanding officer of the SCL Argus, the vessel stranded as a floating fortress on the edge of The Divide. She was a war hero, a member of the Titans… something similar to the Spartans from Halo, and one who made a few decisions that she was being punished for by being marooned in this command.

I don’t really want to dive too deeply into the core story arc, because I found it interesting to see it unfold in front of me. The novel does not go in a direction you think it might but also carves out its own path that I found deeply compelling. It is admittedly a bit of a slow start because Cavlon is very unlikeable in that first chapter, and continues to largely be unlikeable for quite some time. By about chapter five or six, however, I was completely hooked and needed to know how things were going to shake out in the end. if anything I have said so far piqued your interest, then you might check this one out. Right now “The Divide” series is an unfinished story arc with two books currently available and a third on its way. There is a novel coming out in march that is disconnected from The Divide series called Rubicon which also sounds interesting.

Unfortunately, the Library system does not have the audiobook for the next part of this series, so I opted to read it the old-fashioned way. This is where my previous pattern of consumption breaks down a bit because I had been listening to Audiobooks while I played games as a comfy dual activity engaging different parts of my brain with each. Now that I am falling back to the text, however, I traditionally only read from the bed which means after a few nights I am on the ninth chapter. I read relatively slowly at least compared to my wife, so I’ve always felt pressure to be able to consume a book in the amount of time allowed by a library loan. I am equally hooked on this second book as I was on the first, so I might actually start choosing to read over playing a game in the evenings in order to speed up the consumption process. I would use GoodReads to track my progress, but since my wife is way more prolific than I am… and we use the same Amazon account… it is largely littered with her books.

Any unknown amount of time ago (okay not unknown, my profile says 8 months ago)… I set up a Bookwyrm profile so I am likely going to be using that for tracking my book consumption. For those who might be unaware, one of the many projects on the Fediverse that is not Mastodon is a Bookwyrm which serves as a federated alternative to something like Good Reads. You can follow Bookwyrm profiles just like you could any other federated account with an @username@instancename type structure. I am not sure if it will be a purely manual process or if there is a way to maybe have my Libby App update it. Whatever the case it is a thing I plan on sorting out today. I have no real long-term goals other than the chew through the backlog of things people have suggested to me over the years but I never quite got around to consuming.

Successfully Merged

by

I logged in this morning and it appears that the merger has been completed. I am now on Heliopolis instead of Themiscyra and our old server is no more. Because we were not the server being merged into, it means that none of the companies that held territory on our server kept it. I fully expect the next few weeks to be a time of strife as far as faction conflicts go as the companies from three servers ultimately settle into a pecking order. Sadly I had made quite a few friends in the group that previously controlled Everfall, which is where my tier 4 home is located. Positive however is it seems that Everfall is just as well taken care of on Heliopolis with all but one of the crafting machines sitting at Tier 5.

The map on Heliopolis is seemingly more competitive whereas on Themiscyra it seemed like the heavy hitters were all Marauder or Covenant after the biggest Syndicate company transferred off the server. In truth, I don’t much care about who holds a territory so long as they are not being slumlords and doing nothing to maintain the crafting machines. Sadly on Themiscyra we had reached a point where Everfall and Windsward were the only two territories that seemed to put any effort and pride into maintaining them. My hope as well is that with more players there will be more activity happening in the various open world farms since that seems to be the side of the game that I really enjoy doing.

Speaking of farms, I went back out to the camp with Pit Lord Daeshi and have now picked up all of the gear drops off that loot table. It seems like folks are regularly farming this camp because it is where the legendary corrupted trophy material drops, which is heavily needed for invasions. In fact, at two different times out there I was with groups from major companies on the previous server trying to far trophies. Of those drops the one I was seeking out the most of course was the tanking sword… or at least I am turning it into a tanking sword. I figured with two different life-stealing traits on it and a base constitution stat, that screamed sustain and tanking. It does not hurt that it also looks really cool.

Other than farming gear, I spent part of my last night on Themiscyra doing another invasion. It was doomed from the start but we fought valiantly. We had even less than we had the night before and I think we made it to wave 5 before a boss type made it into the base… which caused everyone to collapse in to deal with it… which caused the other gates to fall. Essentially this is sort of what seems to happen as a cascade failure any time you need to call an all-hands-on-point type scenario. Invasions are very much a “manage everything all at once” type thing but once the plates stop spinning and fall down… everything goes south really fast.

Now to sort of bury the lede… I have been up to some shenanigans or at least I am supporting an initiative that is. A handful of my friends have been working on a brand new Mastodon instance that is gaming-focused, given that this seemed to be a niche that wasn’t really well served. Elekk.xyz is a fine server but it is deeply sequestered from the rest of the Fediverse, and really didn’t seem to be all that gaming-focused in the first place. It is nowhere near ready for sign-ups yet, but those of us who are going to be helping with the day-to-day stuff on the instance now have our accounts. Expect more updates as I have them as to when this is going to be launching. I think for the time being I am probably going to keep my Masto.ai account at least in the short run until we have worked out all of the kinks and have federation relays spinning. At some point in the not-too-distant future however I expect to migrate my account once again, but hopefully for the very last time. I have a lot of faith in this team and it will be nice to have a place to suggest where I very directly know everyone involved.

I’ve known about the possibility of this happening for a while but did not want to say anything until it was actually “for seriously” happening.